THE SHERIFF OF CALAVERAS.

BRET HARTE.

[Francis Bret Harte was born at Albany, New York, in 1839. He went to California in 1854, where he soon entered the journalistic profession, and quickly acquired reputation as a skilful humorist, poet, and novelist, his work embodying the peculiar flavor of Western life and character to a degree unequalled by any of his competitors in this field. His short stories, such as "The Luck of Roaring Camp," are strongly original in plot and incident, and are excellent renderings of the peculiarities of life in the mining districts, while his poems, though mainly dependent for popularity on their dialectical oddity and their burlesque humor, often reach a much higher level of poetic merit. He is a keen delineator of the pioneer character, and represents the varieties of individuals in the mining camps with photographic correctness. We offer an illustrative selection from his novel of "Gabriel Conroy." It must be premised that Gabriel is a simpleminded, thoroughly honest and upright giant of the mining districts, who has been suspected of the murder of a Mexican sharper. He is under arrest, and a vigilance committee has determined to make short work of him. Their plans are overheard by Jack Hamlin, a noted gambler, who rides in all haste to the rescue of his friend Gabriel. It is, however, mainly to display the well-drawn picture of the Sheriff of Calaveras that we present this selection.]

AT nine o'clock half a dozen men lounged down the main street and ascended the upper loft of Briggs' warehouse. In ten or fifteen minutes a dozen more from different saloons in the town lounged as indifferently in the direction of Briggs', until at half-past nine the assemblage in the loft numbered fifty men. During this interval a smaller party had gathered, apparently as accidentally and indefinitely as to purpose, on the steps of the little two-story brick court-house in which the prisoner was confined. At ten o'clock a horse was furiously ridden into town, and dropped exhausted at the

outskirts. A few moments later a man hurriedly crossed the plaza toward the court-house. It was Mr. Jack Hamlin. But the Three Voices had preceded him, and from the steps of the court-house were already uttering the popular mandate.

It was addressed to a single man,- —a man who, deserted by his posse and abandoned by his friends, had for the last twelve hours sat beside his charge, tireless, watchful, defiant, and resolute,-Joe Hall, the Sheriff of Calaveras! He had been waiting for this summons, behind barricaded doors, with pistols in his belt, and no hope in his heart; a man of limited ideas and restricted resources, constant to only one intent,-that of dying behind those bars, in defence of that legal trust which his office and an extra fifty votes at the election only two months before had put into his hands. It had perplexed him for a moment that he heard the voices of some of these voters below him clamoring against him, but above their feebler pipe always rose another mandatory sentence, "We command you to take and safely keep the body of Gabriel Conroy," and, being a simple man, the recollection of the quaint phraseology strengthened him and cleared his mind. Ah me! I fear he had none of the external marks of a hero; as I remember him, he was small, indistinctive, and fidgety, without the repose of strength; a man who at that extreme moment chewed tobacco and spat vigorously on the floor; who tweaked the ends of his scanty beard, paced the floor, and tried the locks of his pistols. Presently he stopped before Gabriel, and said, almost fiercely,—

"You hear that?-they are coming!"

Gabriel nodded. Two hours before, when the contemplated attack of the Vigilance Committee had been revealed to him, he had written a few lines to Lawyer Maxwell, which he intrusted to the sheriff. He had

then relapsed into his usual tranquillity,-serious, simple, and, when he had occasion to speak, diffident and apologetic.

"Are you going to help me?" continued Hall.

"In course," said Gabriel, in quiet surprise, "ef you say so. But don't ye do nowt ez would be gettin' yourself into troubil along o' me. I ain't worth it. Maybe it 'ud be jest as square ef ye handed me over to them chaps out yer, allowin' I was a heep o' troubil to you, and reckonin' you'd about hed your sheer o' the keer o' me, and kinder passin' me round. But ef you do feel obligated to take keer o' me, ez hevin' promised the jedges and jury" (it is almost impossible to convey the gentle deprecatoriness of Gabriel's voice and accent at this juncture), "why," he added, "I'm with ye. I'm thar! You understand me!"

He rose slowly, and with quiet but powerfully significant deliberation placed the chair he had been sitting on back against the wall. The tone and act satisfied the sheriff. The seventy-four-gun ship, Gabriel Conroy, was clearing the decks for action.

There was an ominous lull in the outcries below, and then the solitary lifting up of a single voice, the Potential Voice of the night before! The sheriff walked to a window in the hall and opened it. The besieger and besieged measured each other with a look. Then came the Homeric chaff:

"Git out o' that, Joe Hall, and run home to your mother. She's getting oneasy about ye!"

"The h―ll you say!" responded Hall, promptly, "and the old woman in such a hurry she had to borry Al. Barker's hat and breeches to come here! Run home, old gal, and don't parse yourself off for a man ag'in!”

"This ain't no bluff, Joe Hall! Why don't ye call?

Yer's fifty men; the returns are ag'in' ye, and two precincts yet to hear from." (This was a double thrust, at Hall's former career as a gambler, and the closeness of his late election vote.)

"All right! send 'em up by express,-mark 'em C. O. D." (The previous speaker was the expressman.)

"Blank you! Git!"

"Blank you! Come on!"

Here there was a rush at the door, the accidental discharge of a pistol, and the window was slammed down. Words ceased, deeds began.

A few hours before, Hall had removed his prisoner from the uncertain tenure and accessible position of the cells below to the open court-room of the second floor, inaccessible by windows and lit by a skylight in the roof, above the reach of the crowd, whose massive doors were barricaded by benches and desks. A smaller door at the side, easily secured, was left open for reconnoitring. The approach to the court-room was by a narrow stairway, halfway down whose length Gabriel had thrust the long courtroom table as a barricade to the besiegers. The lower outer door, secured by the sheriff after the desertion of his underlings, soon began to show signs of weakening under the vigorous battery from without. From the

landing the two men watched it eagerly. As it slowly yielded, the sheriff drew back toward the side-door and beckoned Gabriel to follow; but with a hasty sign Gabriel suddenly sprang forward and dropped beneath the table as the door with a crash fell inward, beaten from its hinges. There was a rush of trampling feet to the stairway, a cry of baffled rage over the impeding table, a sudden scramble up and upon it, and then, as if on its own volition, the long table suddenly reared itself on end, and, staggering a moment, toppled backward with its clinging

human burden on the heads of the thronging mass below. There was a cry, a sudden stampede of the Philistines to the street, and Samson, rising to his feet, slowly walked to the side-door and re-entered the court-room. But at the same instant an agile besieger who, unnoticed, had crossed the Rubicon, darted from his concealment, and dashed by Gabriel into the room. There was a shout from the sheriff, the door was closed hastily, a shot, and the intruder fell. But the next moment he staggered to his knees, with outstretched hands: "Hold up! I'm yer to help ye!"

It was Jack Hamlin! haggard, dusty, grimy; his gay feathers bedraggled, his tall hat battered, his spotless shirt torn open at the throat, his eyes and cheeks burning with fever, the blood dripping from the bullet-wound in his leg, but still Jack Hamlin, strong and audacious. By a common instinct both men dropped their weapons, ran and lifted him in their arms.

"There!-shove that chair under me! that'll do," said Hamlin, coolly. "We're even now, Joe Hall: that shot wiped out old scores, even if it has crippled me and lost ye my valuable aid. Dry up! and listen to me, and then leave me here! There's but one way of escape. It's up there!" (he pointed to the skylight.) "The rear wall hangs over the Wingdam ditch and gully. Once on the roof, you can drop over with this rope, which you must unwind from my body, for I'm d-d if I can do it myself. Can you reach the skylight ?"

"There's a step-ladder from the gallery," said the sheriff, joyously. "But won't they see us, and be prepared?"

"Before they can reach the gully by going round, you'll be half a mile away in the woods. But what in blank are you waiting for? Go! You can hold on here for ten minutes more if they attack the same point; but if they